The site is a bit rough and all the content is not yet available. There are ~300 bench plaques on the boardwalk and town of OC, NJ and I am manually entering all the content. So I do about 5-15 photos a day and upload new pics every couple days. I'm also playing with a redesign offline, perhaps rounded corners (!?), so even that might change soon.
Maybe it would be good to document my reasons for the site. I do explain this a little in the FAQ at the site. In summary, I've been heading to OC since I was 6 weeks old. My grandparents have had a house at the north end of the boardwalk since the late 60's. I really consider it a second home.
The plaques started appearing on the boardwalk in the early-1990s. The program has been stopped and started several times since then. There have been some controversy as well about how long the plaques are meant to stay on the benches. When I discovered that I wondered if anyone had chroniceled the existing plaques. Having graduated from college as the internet was exploding on the world, my first thought was to create a website. And it is a natural for backend storage in an XML/XSLT application.
So I spent an early morning in mid-July 2008 walking the length of the boardwalk. Along the way I snapped photos with my low-end Kodak camera of each plaque. That explains the fuzzy qualities of many of the photos. As I walked I made mental notes (first mistake) of where each plaque was located. I also didn't bring a monopod to stabilize the camera (second mistake). The entire walk took about 3.5 hours.
I expected to have more people ask me what I was doing. In fact only 3 people stopped me at all. The first was a couple near the north end Kohr Brother's Ice Cream stand. I had to ask them to slide over so I could photograph the plaque. Obviously they asked what I was up to. I called it an 'art project'.
The second was a woman who stopped me near the Sindia pavillion. I was taking a shot of the bench across from the pavillion and she asked if I wanted my picture taken with the plaque. Naturally she thought I was taking it due to personal signficance. I wasn't expecting that question and blurted out a too quick, 'no'...which I quickly apoligized for. She took off immediately so I didn't get a chance to explain myself.
The third was a group of Leigh University alumni (circa 1940s) who I ran into at the south end turnaround. They were a wonderful source of information about the plaques and the city's program. And they told me of a book that had been printed with photos of the plaques. I've since bought the book and misplaced it. However, it wasn't available through any online retailer and I only found it by asking at the Atlantic Book Warehouse on the boardwalk itself. I like to think I am taking the next step of that author's work and putting the plaques out for a wider audience.
Going forward I have several things to accomplish:
- finish inputting all photos I have on hand
- re-walk the boardwalk to retake fuzzy photos, check locations, add new plaques
- site redesign
- accumulate more information about the people and events mentioned on the plaques
- accumulate more information about the program and the benches themselves
- publicize the site more
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